German Memory - US President Gen Dwight D Eisenhower & The "Other Losses" of German Prisoners

According to Canadian Author James Bacque, Eisenhower personally, secretly, and with sinister intent changed the status of surrendered German soldiers from prisoners of war to Disarmed Enemy Forces.

But the historians argued that the change in designation was a policy matter. The decision was made not by Eisenhower but by his superiors, specifically by the European Advisory Commission. Nor was any attempt made to keep it secret. All those involved acted with the authority of the British, Russian and American Governments, and they were perfectly straightforward about the reason for the change in status. The Allies could not afford to feed the millions of German prisoners at the same level at which they were able to feed German civilians, the civilians of the liberated countries of Western Europe and the displaced persons. But the United States and other Allied nations had signed the Geneva Convention, which had the force of a treaty. They did not wish to violate it, so they used the new designation of "Disarmed Enemy Forces."

The greatest number of "other losses" revealed in the August 1945 Report of the Military Governor. (These monthly reports are in the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kan., in the National Archives in Washington and elsewhere; they are a basic source on every aspect of the occupation, including food shortages and prisoners). Historians accused Bacque that he did not cite them and there was no evidence that he examined them even.

The August report lists the numbers of disarmed enemy forces discharged by American forces and those transferred to the British and French for forced labor.

The report states: "An additional group of 663,576 are listed as 'other losses,' consisting largely of members of the Volksturm [Peoples' Militia], released without formal discharge."

The People's Militia consisted of older men (up to 80 years of age, mainly World War I veterans) and boys of 16 or sometimes less. American guards and camp authorities told the old men to go home and take care of their grandchildren, the boys to go home and return to school along with the transfers to other zones. Historians criticized James Bacque that he ignored all these facts for his 'missing million'.

They further criticized Bacque was wrong on every major charge and nearly all his minor ones. Eisenhower was not a Hitler, he did not run death camps, German prisoners did not die by the hundreds of thousands, there was a severe food shortage in 1945, there was nothing sinister or secret about the "disarmed enemy forces" designation.

Nevertheless, Historians agreed with Bacque on one point, that some US Army soldiers and their officers were capable of acting in almost as brutal a manner as the Nazis.

But number of historians has commented in their reviews in Britain, France, Germany and Canada, "they cannot believe what Mr. Bacque says about Eisenhower is true, but they cannot also disprove it."

Eisenhower, the German descendant American who showed his statesmanship and greater humanity by ending the Korean War and avoiding military intervention in Vietnam finally left a controversial legacy in his ancestral Germany; once said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."